Do you have a Taiwanese boyfriend or husband?

Flicka!! :frowning:

mesheel, sounds like he’s making excuses for you to not meet the family. mind if i ask where you are? where is he? do you plan to settle here in the future? or in europe? if you’re in europe you could probably avoid the family stuff altogether. if not, you’re in for a rude awakening at some point. sorry, girlfriend.
and tigerman is right too, btw.

[quote=“Alien”]Flicka!! :frowning:

mesheel, sounds like he’s making excuses for you to not meet the family. mind if i ask where you are? where is he? do you plan to settle here in the future? or in Europe? if you’re in Europe you could probably avoid the family stuff altogether. if not, you’re in for a rude awakening at some point. sorry, girlfriend.
and tigerman is right too, btw.[/quote]

Got to agree here. Most of my pals are local guys. We’ve discussed this issue before. Most of them feel that their families wouldn’t accept a foreign woman, at least not at first.

My own experience in being introduced to the parents is that there is usually some kind of initial resistance, followed by uneasy acceptance. If you are easy to like (speaking Mandarin and/or Taiwanese is obviously a big plus), they generally come around, but not after asking a lot of very personal questions.

I also think it is normal and natural for parents to worry that marriage to a foreign spouse will take their pride and joy far away from them. Most Taiwanese parents look forward to an old age in which their son or daughter is always on hand to watch over them and care for them.

Good luck with everything.

[quote=“Alien”]Flicka!! :frowning:

[/quote]

I was responding to LBTW’s post, not Mesheel. I gotta agree that he sounds like he is making excuses to not meet the family. I have heard that things smooth out after the first grandchild is born, but maybe that’s rushing it a bit for you. :wink:

Not sure if your talking about me, but if so, no, I’m not trying to make excuses for not meeting his family. I wouldn’t mind to meet them, but my boyfriend is afraid of it. He is trying to postpone it as long as he can and I cannot force him to.
I’m just a little worried about, what is going to happen once they know, that I’m a foreigner. Since my boyfriend and I are going to get married sooner or later I just wish, that they’ll accept me and won’t give us a hard time.

And yes, my boyfriends attachement to me could be a problem, but I guess the reason for this is that we only see each other every 6 month for a couple of weeks and it is just natural that he wants to spend as much time with me as he can. As for me, of course I also want to spend as much time with him that I can, but when I come to Taipei, I also want to see my other friends I haven’t seen for a while and this sometimes did cause problems in the past. But I guess this all will settle, after I’ve finally graduated and moved to Taipei. After a while he’ll probably be happy not to see me 24 hours a day… :smiley:

[quote=“mesheel”][ul][li]I wouldn’t mind to meet them, but my boyfriend is afraid of it. He is trying to postpone it as long as he can and I cannot force him to. [/li]
[li]Since my boyfriend and I are going to get married sooner or later…[/li][/ul][/quote]
As long as the first remains true, don’t be so sure about the second.

If he’s still making excuses after you’ve been living in Taiwan for a few months, I would consider that a very bad sign. I’m not trying to scare you. I just tend to be a cynic, so take this FWIW.

I can see this is going to have a bad ending. Sorry mesheel but your story sounds too much like the second wife tales we’ve been hearing from Dongguan for the past 10 years.

Taiwan girl broke my heart 6 years ago. She loved me, I loved her. Mommy and Daddy said no foreigners, and the fear of not having anybody come to her big wedding banquet of 200 tables was enough to break that one up.

Get used to it. No matter how much “love” they profress to you, bring in the parents and/or the friends and you will always lose. Even if they are miserable they will choose them over you.

Not that I don’t think it can work, but be true to yourself always, and never sell yourself short. And never, never, except this cultural difference as an excuse to treat you like shit. If you feel uncomfortable and they are not treating you right than leave, don’t try to figure it out or rationalize it, except it and move on.

I speak from experience.

FEI

Nevertheless it is true that more and more Taiwanese are marrying foreigners (i.e. people who are “non Chinese” and/or “non Taiwanese.”)

blueface,
You know nothing of mesheel’s relationship, so saying something like that certainly isn’t good advice, is it?

Mesheel, If you are really wanting to marry your man, I recommend you don’t rush into it. Taiwanese men can be great boyfriends, but as husbands, that’s a different story. The family thing will, and I promise you this, always be a factor, no matter how estranged he may be from them at present. There’s a reason you haven’t been introduced. Have you met his friends?
I had no trouble with my ex husbands parents, they were quite lovely to me, but there were some serious issues revolving around his brother in law and family business.
I had no trouble with my ex boyfriend’s parents as they were dead, but some MAJOR issues revolving around his sister and his friends/lifestyle. The sister thing didn’t come up until the last year and although our relationship was suffering some by then, her presence (constant) suddenly in his home made for an even quicker deterioration. I could go on and on about her, but when we split up last January, the idea of that witch was one pretty major factor.
So it’s not always the parents, mind you.
This is of course depending on the responsibility of your Taiwanese man toward his family, birth order or just plain old obligation and duty.

Well, thanks for your concern guys, but trust me, if I tell you that he is not the kind of guy you’re warning me of. And believe me, if I tell you that I’m not the naive kind of girl, who would fall for guys like that and who gives up everything for a man she loves. If I were, I wouldn’t have gone back home after my year as an exchange student and I wouldn’t have put myself through this depressing long distance relationsship in the first place. If one can endure that, one can endure everything! :unamused:
Besides, if I’d finally stop vasting my time on this computer, I’ll be graduating by the end of this year and all this torture will come to its end. We’ve just booked our flights today…yupppiiieee…:smiley:

I fully understand why he hasn’t introduced me to his parents yet. I’ve never introduced any of my boyfriends to my parents before. He was the first one they got to see and this only because we needed free lodging on our way to my place… :smiling_imp: And now my mom keeps telling me how much better Jackie Chan is looking since he got his hair cut short again… :? It’s not worth it, is it?

The overall sense of this thread is “Be careful. It could be more difficult than it seems.” I think that’s not just about cross-cultural relationships but relationships in general. When you get married, things often change in regard to the partners’ assumptions about each other’s roles and one’s family’s influences as well.

Many parents who let their children do what they want become surprisingly opinionated when it comes to a marriage partner. Couples who agree in theory that they will have an equal relationship start getting annoyed when she doesn’t fix dinner each night or he doesn’t make enough money to support both.

Now, add the fact that you’re living in a foreign country, distanced from the overt influences of your family and culture. Your partner may be distanced from family and friends’ influences if he’s spending lots of time with you and /or in the foreign community. You each are often shielded from each other’s families by distance and/or language barriers.

But after marriage, either of you might expect to “settle down” more. What does that mean to you in a foreign country? What does that mean to him in terms of relationship with his family and his work? How do you imagine things changing with the addition of kids? That’s something to discuss.

Getting into a serious relationship always involves a degree of risk. In the end it’s about you and your partner and the kind of life you want together. Good luck!

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[quote=“Alien”]blueface,
You know nothing of mesheel’s relationship, so saying something like that certainly isn’t good advice, is it?[/quote]

Neither it seems does Mesheel. And I know certainly as much as you. My Taiwanese wife read the thread and said exactly the same thing only in much more earthy terms. Something smells.

If we’d care what other people think about our relationship we wouldn’t have come so far. We will all proof you wrong sooner or later.

Good for you, Mesheel!

When are you going to be in Taipei?

I hope yu do prove the skeptics wrong… but remember, you asked for comments.

If everything goes as planed, we’ll leave for TPE on Jan. 18th. But before that, I have to survive my final exams…=((

Maybe this whole cross-cultural relationship thing is just being exaggerated. I mean, every person has his/her own way of life, opinions and character traits. A happy relationship is a lot of work even if the partners grew up in the same culture. I once had a boyfriend whos parents raised him using anti-authoritarian methods. Gosh, the guy was just driving me crazy sometimes and it would never have worked out with the two of us.
So, I guess it is not a matter of culture only, what matters is that the people match and get along with each other.

Also I have noted in many cross cultural marriages that the men and women have different ideas toward sex. Most of the men I talk to consider sex as a kind of release. Women on the other hand tend to consider sex as an intrusion.

I can’t explain the reasons for these different viewpoints, but I will keep researching and try to get more hard data . . . .

If you don’t mind, let’s not talk about sex here. There are a lot of other threaDs on this forum, where you can talk about that. Thanks

Short question on the side: Why did I suddenly get a star under my name? What does that mean?

[quote=“mesheel”]Short question on the side: Why did I suddenly get a star under my name? What does that mean?[/quote]You get a star for each year you’ve been here, as long as you have over 250 posts. I’ll let you get back to talking about relationships of which I know nothing…

well mesheel, I wish you all the luck in the world, but I am just wondering how you KNOW your boyfriend ISN’T going to fall under his family’s control if the two of you have never lived near his family?
But an even more important question for me is - why hasn’t he told his parents the truth about your nationality??? If he is so independent, then he shouldn’t hesitate should he???

As for Hartzell’s observation that more Taiwanese are marrying more non-Taiwanese, this may be true…but I bet a little research into these marriages would reveal that most are ending in divorce.

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